Australian Aboriginal artefacts
Coolamons and carriers such as dillybags, allowed Aboriginal peoples to carry water, food and cradle babies.
Aboriginal peoples used several different types of weapons including shields (also known as hielaman), spears, spear-throwers, boomerangs and clubs.
[3] Aboriginal peoples used spears for a variety of purposes including hunting, fishing, gathering fruit, fighting, retribution, punishment, in ceremony, as commodities for trade, and as symbolic markers of masculinity.
[4][5] Spears could be made from a variety of materials including softwoods, bamboo (Bambusa arnhemica), cane and reed.
[4] Projectile points could also be made from many different materials including flaked stone, shell, wood, kangaroo or wallaby bone, lobster claws, stingray spines, fish teeth, and more recently iron, glass and ceramics.
[4][5][7] An Aboriginal club, otherwise known as a waddy or nulla-nulla, could be used for a variety of purposes such as for hunting, fishing, digging, for grooving tools, warfare and in ceremonies.
Clubs which could create severe trauma were made from extremely hard woods such as acacias including ironwood and mitji.
[19][20] Shields originating from the North Queensland rainforest region are highly sought after by collectors due to their lavish decorative painting designs.
They were painted with red, yellow, white and black using natural materials including ochre, clay, charcoal and human blood.
On the final day of a young Aboriginal man's initiation ceremony, he is given a blank shield for which he can create his own design.
[26] Bark could only be successfully extracted at the right time of a wet season in order to limit the damage to the tree's growth and so that it was flexible enough to use.
[24] Due to the small draft and lightness of bark canoes, they were used in calmer waters such as billabongs, rivers, lakes, estuaries and bays.
[27] Aboriginal men would throw spears to catch fish from the canoe, whereas women would use hooks and lines.
[27] Dugout canoes were a major development in watercraft technology and were suited for the open sea and in rougher conditions.
[35] Coolamons could be made from a variety of materials including wood, bark, animal skin, stems, seed stalks, stolons, leaves and hair.
[35] The Australian Museum holds a bark water carrying vessel originating from Flinders Island, Queensland in 1905.
[35] Message sticks, also known as "talking-sticks", were used in Aboriginal communities to communicate invitations, declarations of war, news of death and so forth.
Special messengers would carry message sticks over long distances and were able to travel through tribal borders without harm.
[37] Some Aboriginal peoples used materials such as teeth and bone to make ornamental objects such as necklaces and headbands.
One of the most fascinating discoveries was a necklace made from 178 Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii) teeth recovered from Lake Nitchie in New South Wales in 1969.
Bone ornaments found from Boulia in central western Queensland were made from the phalanges of kangaroos and dingoes.
[41] Riji are the pearl shells traditionally worn by Aboriginal men in the north-west part of Australia, around present day Broome.
Lines known as ramu, often in a sacred pattern or depicting a traditional story, are carved onto the guwan, at which point it becomes a riji.
[42] The Kopi mourning cap is an item of headware made from clay, worn by mostly womenfolk of some Aboriginal peoples, for up to six months after the death of a loved one.
After cutting off their hair, they would weave a net using sinews from emu, place this on their head, and cover it with layers of gypsum, a type of white clay obtained from rivers.
[47][49][40] In Arnhem Land, the Gulf region of Queensland and Cape York, children’s bags and baskets were made from fibre twine.
[50] Artefacts sometimes regarded as sacred items and/or used in ceremonies include bullroarers, didgeridoos and carved boards called churinga.
